Monday, February 19, 2018

A
newly published study further supports the hypothesis that Amelia Earhart
landed and died as a castaway on the remote atoll known as Nikumaroro (Gardner
Island).

A highly
technical peer-reviewed paper published in the scientific journal Forensic Anthropology compares
measurements of the bones of a castaway found on an uninhabited Pacific atoll
in 1940 with new quantified data on Amelia Earhart. The author concludes that
“Until definitive evidence is presented that the remains are not those of
Amelia Earhart, the most convincing argument is that they are hers.”

The study,
titled “Amelia Earhart and the Nikumaroro Bones – A 1941 Analysis versus Modern
Quantitative Techniques” is open access and can be downloaded at the University of Florida Press.

The author,
Richard L. Jantz, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus and Director Emeritus at the
University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center. The university’s
Anthropological Research Facility, famously known as “The Body Farm,” was
founded by Dr. William Bass. The donated body program was established in 1981
as a means of studying factors that affect human decomposition and to develop a
skeletal collection of modern Americans. Many of the skeletons used to
characterize Amelia Earhart were from the donated collection.

In 2005,
Richard Jantz and Stephen Ousley created Fordisc, a computer program for
estimating sex, ancestry, and stature from skeletal measurements. Now in version
3.1, Fordisc, is used by nearly every board certified forensic anthropologist
in the United States and many around the world.

This latest
finding in the 80-year search for an answer to Earhart’s fate is the
culmination of research that began with TIGHAR’s 1998 discovery of original
British files that document the finding of a partial skeleton on Gardner Island
(now Nikumaroro) in 1940. The bones were suspected at the time of possibly
being the remains of Amelia Earhart. In 1941, a British colonial doctor concluded
that the bones belonged to a short, stocky European or mixed-race male. The
bones were subsequently lost.

In 1998, forensic anthropologists Karen
Burns and Richard Jantz analyzed measurements of the bones included in the
British file. Using late 20th century forensic tools and techniques they
concluded that the skeleton appeared to be consistent with a white female of
Earhart’s height and ethnic origin. In 2015, British graduate student Pamela
Cross and Australian anthropologist Richard Wright took issue with Burns and
Jantz. In a paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science they
argued that the original 1941 British findings were more likely correct.
Their study, titled “The Nikumaroro bones identification controversy:
First-hand examination versus evaluation by proxy — Amelia Earhart found or
still missing?” can be purchased at Science
Direct.

Karen Burns died in 2012, but in response
to the 2015 Cross/Wright critique, Richard Jantz undertook a quantitative
analysis of the Nikumaroro bone measurements using the latest software and
new forensic information about Amelia Earhart’s physique obtained by TIGHAR
with the cooperation of Photek Forensic Imaging, the Smithsonian Air &
Space Museum, and Purdue University Special Collections. His newly released
paper, “Amelia Earhart and the Nikumaroro Bones – A 1941 Analysis versus
Modern Quantitative Techniques” is the result.

Dr. Jantz’s study stands in stark contrast
to the evidence presented in the July 2017 History Channel special “Amelia
Earhart – The Lost Evidence.” Shortly after the show aired, the lost evidence
– a photo said to show Earhart and Noonan in Japanese custody – was revealed
to be neither lost nor evidence when it was found to have come from a
Japanese tour book printed in 1935 – two years before the flyers disappeared.
The show was withdrawn from re-broadcast and a promised investigation by the
History Channel has, so far, not materialized.

Since launching
The Earhart Project in 1988, TIGHAR has taken a science-based approach to
testing the hypothesis that the missing flight ended at Nikumaroro. Thirty
years of research suggests that Earhart made a relatively safe landing on the
dry reef at the west end of the uninhabited island. She and her navigator Fred
Noonan sent radio distress calls for six nights before rising tides washed the
airplane into the ocean where it broke up in the surf at the reef edge. An
over-flight by U.S. Navy search planes on the seventh day failed to spot the
stranded flyers. Earhart survived for a matter of weeks, perhaps months, before
dying at an improvised campsite near the atoll’s southeast end. Her partial
skeleton was found three years later when the British established a colony on
the island. Noonan’s fate is unknown.

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Yes, we're back from Nikumaroro, and a very successful trip it was. Reports will be forthcoming as analyses are completed, and I'll put together a summary report shortly to publish here.

But while we were gone, there was much sturm und drang about the "Japanese Capture Hypothesis" (presented by some of its adherents as the Manifest Truth). The History Channel put out a show about it -- now withdrawn after a key piece of evidence got authoritatively debunked -- and apparently got the ratings it sought, since people continue to ask me about it. I've watched the show, and don't think it's entirely without merit, though it's breathless, credulous, one-sided, and strikes me as a bit silly.

But it's all made me ponder what I think is one of the saddest features of the Japanese Capture Hypothesis -- that its adherents have thrown up such a bunch of fluff that they've buried some real stories, about real people in places like the Marshall and Mariana Islands. These people's stories deserve to be remembered just as much as do Earhart's and Noonan's, but they're forgotten, and I find that very sad.

Consider the "woman on the dock" who figures prominently in the History Channel show. Apparently a woman of European ethnicity, with shortish, maybe curly hair, sitting on a dock in (it's said) Jaluit in the Marshall Islands, with a tallish man of similar ethnicity standing nearby. These HAVE TO BE Earhart and Noonan, trumpet the Japanese Capture aficionados, some of them even after the image was revealed to have been published in 1935. Why? Well, because who ELSE could they be?

Well, they could be lots of people. The Marshalls were held as a colonial possession by Germany from the late 1890s until 1917, when they were mandated to Japan by the League of Nations. Jaluit was the colonial center. There were lots of German traders, government people, medical personnel, missionaries, and probably beach bums, not all of whom simply evaporated when the Japanese Empire took over.

I look a the woman on the dock and I wonder if she was, say, a doctor working in the local hospital, taking a bit of time off from her duties to watch the highly decorated schooners, each representing a village, preparing for their scheduled race. And I wonder what happened to her. Did she get sent home in 1937 or 38? Was she Jewish? Did she wind up in a camp? How sad that her story has been lost in the rush to turn her into Earhart.

Or consider the well-dressed maybe American woman that eyewitnesses have said they saw in captivity on Saipan -- who in the eyes of the Japanese Capture aficionados just must have been Earhart. No matter that she was described by one eyewitness as "a little bit mestiza" -- i.e. of mixed race. The interviewer -- busily trying to establish that the witness had seen Earhart -- rushed right past that bit of intelligence. Which fits with stories told by some who worked with the Japanese authorities (but who can trust THEM, right?) about a Japanese-American woman who was imprisoned and maybe executed as a spy on Saipan.

I wonder about her. Was she maybe a teacher, or again a medical worker, or a missionary, or perhaps just an adventurous young Nisei woman from, say, San Francisco who got a job on Saipan -- which too had been substantially developed by the Germans and then by the Japanese; it was no Bali Hai -- and got crosswise with the authorities when war came? Was she perhaps a US spy? Did she do great service to her country?

We'll probably never know, because the rush to turn her into Earhart has destroyed her identity. As in the case of the woman on the dock in Jaluit.

Archaeologists are story tellers. I hate to see a story lost. So losing the stories of the woman on the dock, and the woman in the Saipan jail, makes me very sad.

Monday, August 8, 2016

Editor's Preface: Another artifact analysis by one of TIGHAR's most redoubtable researchers.

Please note the continuing need for data on pharmaceutical bottles from Australia and New Zealand. Finding a clear Antipodal match for the vial that Joe describes would be the simplest and surest way to disqualify it as an Ameliafact. TFK

During the 2015 “In Search of Amelia Earhart”
trip to Nikumaroro, organized by Betchart Expeditions, Kimberly Zimmerman
spotted an amber medicine vial, resting on the ground among other glass vessels
near the colonial village’s fallen co-operative store. The vial measures
roughly 10 by 2 centimeters and has a flute-edged cap apparently made of
aluminum. The cap has been punctured in the center as though with a sharp
object. Both the cap and the base of the vial have machine-made markings. Since
glass vessels in the village are assumed to be associated with the Nikumaroro
colony, active from 1939 to 1963, we decided not to bring the vial back with
us, but we took photographs. Since then, we have become interested in some of
the vial’s attributes. We plan to retrieve this artifact when we return to the
island in 2017.

Fig. 1: the amber vial

While the vial awaits recovery, the
photographs we took provided some data to consider. We began by looking at the circular
inscription on the top of the vial’s cap.

The Inscription on the Cap

We were struck by this inscription, which, on
account of time and wear, is mostly illegible, save for a few consecutive letters:
UCA | PHARM[1]

Fig. 2: The top of the cap

Since available literature supports the idea
that amber vials were most commonly used for medicines,[2] it
would seem safe to presume that the second word on the top of the cap is
“Pharmacy.”

The word before “Pharmacy” is more
problematic, since only 3 terminal letters, UCA, remain. Presumably, it
represents the name of the pharmacy in which the vial was filled and capped.

While pondering this inscription, we noticed
the intriguing coincidence between those three letters “UCA” and the fact that
Earhart resided in Toluca Lake from early November 1934[3]
until taking off from Oakland, California for what became her last flight on
May 20, 1937. Her first home in Toluca Lake was a rented cottage on 10515
Valley Spring Lane. She and George Putnam moved into their last residence in
the neighborhood on 10042 Valley Spring Lane on September 21, 1935.[4]

Additionally, we recalled the many other glass
vessels found in various locales on the island that might have come from an
American pharmacy[5],
many of which are not easily placed in the context of a remote Pacific island
inhabited by Tuvaluan and Gilbertese colonists (but which might be placed in
the context of the U.S. Coast Guard Loran Station that operated on the southern
tip of the island from 1944 to 1946). We have spent considerable time studying
these other apparently pharmacy-based vessels.

There was no telling yet if the vial had come
from an American pharmacy, and perhaps the Toluca Lake association was coincidental,
but it would have been hasty to conclude this before setting out to discover
what “UCA PHARM” may have meant, and how old the vial may have been.

Exploring Village Suppliers

The vial was found, again, on the site of the
abandoned village colony. We know that the colony was supplied at various times
by an Australian firm, On Chong & Company of Sydney.[6] The
idea that the vial was supplied by an Australian pharmacy with the letters UCA at
the end of a word in its business name was therefore a lead we definitely wished
to pursue.

Unfortunately, we were unable to locate any
historical directories of pharmacies in Australia. An exhaustive check of
Australian sources of the vial was therefore not possible. However, we were
able to locate a database of all present-day cities and towns on Earth, which included
the names of locales whose names end in UCA, in Australia and elsewhere, thus
suggesting pharmacies adopting those names.[7]

This world database showed there is only one town
in Australia whose last three letters end in UCA: Echuca. An online search of
present-day pharmacies in Echuca showed that there is an Echuca Amcal Pharmacy
in business there. We received no reply from a letter we wrote to Echuca Amcal
Pharmacy inquiring whether it had ever seen the amber vial, so our inquiries
into possible Australian connections to the vial appear to have reached an
impasse. We lack the data at present to investigate more thoroughly.

The relative proximity of Nikumaroro to New
Zealand and the fact that the island colony was a British possession would
argue for New Zealand and the United Kingdom as the next likely sources of
origin for a vial found in the village. Again, however, we were unable to
locate any historical directories of pharmacies in these locales. We did find,
perhaps tellingly, that the world database showed there are no cities or towns
in either of these countries whose names, or words within their names, end in
the letters UCA.

Exploring American Leads

On the other hand, at least in the U.S., there
was much more data at hand to collect and to analyze. A complete yearbook of U.S.
drug stores in operation has been available since 1912 through an annual
publication known as the Hayes Druggist Directory. From a detailed study of
available Hayes Directories[8]
and online pharmacy directories from 1922 to 2015, we created a database
spreadsheet of all pharmacies in the U.S. whose business name, city, or street
address has the letters UCA at the end of a word.[9]
Each pharmacy that satisfied these criteria was placed at the head of its own
column on this spreadsheet. The rows of the spreadsheet represent the calendar
years 1922 to 2015, inclusive. If the pharmacy was in business for the year
represented by a row, then a numeral was placed in the cell in which that
calendar year (row) and that pharmacy (column) intersect. The numeral in
relevant cells of the spreadsheet represents a “commercial strength” score of
between 1 and 90, which is a rough comparator of the worth of inventory-on-hand
of each pharmacy in each year it was in business, as computed by Hayes.[10]

By summing the commercial strength scores for
each pharmacy in each column, a final score was computed for each pharmacy’s
commercial strength for all the years it was in business from 1922 to 2015. By
dividing each pharmacy’s final commercial strength score by the sum total of
all the pharmacies’ scores, the relative proportional contribution of each
pharmacy to the total commercial strength of the “UCA pharmacy market” was
obtained as a percentage.

From this survey of directories we
discovered:

·Overall, U.S. pharmacies with UCA at the end
of the business name, street address or city are rare. Only 26 were located in
a 94-year period. There were six that were in business last year. Given that
there were 60,276 pharmacies operating in the United States last year,[11]
this means that roughly .01% (1 in 10,000) of the total U.S. pharmacies last
year satisfied the criteria for inclusion in this analysis.

·41% of the UCA pharmacies’ total commercial
strength scores come from a single pharmacy in Amelia Earhart’s neighborhood, the
Toluca Lake district of North Hollywood, California. This pharmacy was for most
of its long history (1936-1991) known officially as the “Lakeside Pharmacy in
Toluca Lake, North Hollywood,” but there was a brief period (1937-38) when it
was listed in the San Fernando Valley City Directory simply as “Toluca Lake
Pharmacy.”[12]

·62% of the UCA pharmacies’ total commercial
strength scores come from nine pharmacies, all with the word ‘Toluca’ in their
name, within 3.1 miles of the Toluca Lake district, in North Hollywood, Studio
City, and Burbank, California.

·When the sample size is adjusted, such that
only pharmacies with names ending in UCA are included in the database,
discarding pharmacies occupying streets or cities whose names end in UCA, 88%
of the remaining UCA pharmacies’ total commercial strength scores come from
nine pharmacies within 3.1 miles of the Toluca Lake district of North
Hollywood, Studio City, and Burbank, California.

We do not know whether Amelia Earhart was a
customer of the Toluca Lake Pharmacy, much less whether she bought anything in
vials there, but in three letters Earhart wrote to her mother before the world
flight, she mentions a “vegetable concentrate” pharmacy elixir, telling of the
benefits her husband, George Putnam, derived from taking it, and urging her
mother, sister, niece and nephew to try some.[13]
In one of the letters she states that a “Dr. Friend,”[14]
would be willing to “make up a concentrate suitable for individual needs.”
Vegetable and fruit concentrates often sold in vials, and still do today, as in
the photo below.

Fig. 5: Modern fruit concentrate vials

Both of Earhart’s residences in Toluca Lake
were between .7 and .8 miles of Toluca Lake Pharmacy. There was no pharmacy
nearer by. The next nearest pharmacy to Earhart’s neighborhood in 1937 was W.D.
Roberts Drugs, which was 1.4 miles distant.[15]

None of the research thus far, however, had
attempted to answer the question of whether the vial was even old enough to
have been brought to the island by Amelia Earhart, or whether it could be ruled
out from having been brought by Earhart on account of its presumed age. To
begin to answer this question, we turned our attention to the markings on the
vial’s base.

Marks of Distinction?

Base markings can often identify a bottle’s
manufacturer, the year in which a bottle was made, or a range of years in which
a bottle could have been made.

On the base of the vial, there is a numeral 2
to the left of an unidentified central mark, and a numeral 0 to the right of
it, along with a letter code, NT, centered below the mark.

Fig. 6: The base of the vial

The Society for Historical Archaeology’s Bottle
Research Group[16]
(a group that helps archaeologists and others identify bottles) and members of
the Australian Antique Bottle Forum[17] examined
these marks. Neither group was able to match the marks to any glass trademark they
had seen or could reference.

The markings, however, share features with
what the Owens-Illinois Glass Company used on its bottle bases from 1929 to
1954, as shown in the following photos:

Fig. 7: Toulouse (1971) illustration of OI mark with key explaining the meaning of the numerals[18]

Fig. 8: Compared vials

The green vial base on the left side of the above
photo has the first Owens-Illinois trademark, "I" within a diamond over an oval,
used from 1929 to 1954. The base of the amber vial found on Nikumaroro, on the
right side of the above photo, has a letter "I" nested between brackets. Both
vials have the same triadic arrangement of codes to the left, right, and
beneath the mark. The Nikumaroro vial, however, lacks a central oval, shown in
red, which, if it were present, would have heightened its resemblance to the
Owens-Illinois base mark.

One way to explain the discrepancy relates to
quality control problems. Glass factories used a lubricant called dope to
prevent bottles from sticking to their molds. If a plant failed to clean the
molds, whether from pressure to meet deadlines or simple oversight, the dope deteriorated
and built up on the surface, so that letters or numbers on the finished bottle
could be obscured or become very faint.[19] If
degraded dope did build up on the mold that made the vial, it could have
obscured the trademark of the Owens-Illinois Glass Company (or another
company).

However, it goes without saying that facts,
not hypotheses, are needed to identify a bottle mark conclusively. The only
marks that can offer facts are those that are present, not those that
may or may not be absent. Thus, although we hoped to learn the vial’s maker or
its manufacture date, the markings on the base of the vial were simply too
obscure to yield this information with certainty.

The Cap of the Vial: Datable Features?

We then turned our attention to the cap on
the vial (excluding the inscription, which has already been discussed) in the hope
that it would provide answers to our questions about when and where the vial
was made. Three noteworthy features suggest the cap is of the roll-on variety,
distinct from the far more common pre-threaded caps:

1)The cap is conformed tightly to the vial such that it could not
easily be removed.

Roll-on
caps were, and are, “pressed in the capping machine by rotating rollers and
shaped to conform with the individual bottle’s threads.”[20]
While one cannot discount the possibility the cap is misshapen from repeated
use, or originated from a container other than the vial itself, poor fit was a
common complaint of caps in general in the early 1930s.[21]
R-O caps specifically were known to stick because defects in the threads of the
finish could cause the cap to be “drawn into the defect, locking the cap on and
making it very difficult for the consumer to remove.”[22]

2)The cap is made of heavy gauge metal, probably aluminum, and is
not rusted. It has no outwardly rolled distal wire edge, as would be common on
ordinary pre-threaded screw caps.

The
Aluminum Seal Company (Alseco), a subsidiary[23]
of the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, first
introduced roll-on caps, also known as R-O, in 1924. R-O caps were “initially used”
in the early years after 1924 “for prescription drugs and later in some
vapor-vacuum sealed caps for foods.”[24] While
not all aluminum caps are R-O caps, it would appear that all R-O caps are
aluminum, due to aluminum’s excellent malleability.[25]
They can be found today on liquor bottles and some condiments, such as olive
oil.[26]

3)The cap has a rectangular tab-like indentation a few millimeters
wide on the lower part of its skirt, in which the metal appears to have been
broken off from the cap.

The
rectangular indentation, visible in the lower right corner of the cap on the
amber vial in the photo below, could be a remnant of a tamper-proof seal patented
in 1933 by Alcoa specifically for R-O closures.[27]
The seal was pressed around the base of the cap during the production process
of crimping the cap with rollers. One removed the seal by pulling up on a tab. Once
removed, a portion of the depending metal skirt could be deformed or torn away.

If we are interpreting these features correctly,
they could indicate the cap was made between 1924 and the mid-1930s.

The cap could also have been made at a later
time, however, since the use of R-O seals on drug containers continued long
past the 1930s. Although aluminum closures “seem to have been banned
altogether” during World War II,[28]
and despite aluminum shortages during the Korean War (1950-53),[29]
R-O caps on drug bottles were marketed in the 1950s and 1960s, and “might yet
be in use in Central America.”[30] These
later R-O caps are described in trade literature as having a “locking band
attached to the cap by small metal bridges… (The locking band) remains on the
bottle after the cap is removed.”[31] One
can easily locate this type of R-O cap today on condiments sold in supermarkets.

While the Nikumaroro vial does not have a
persisting locking band, such a band could have been removed from the cap
during its history.

In general, however, R-O aluminum closures on
medicine containers appear to have been very rare. We surveyed hundreds of
medicine vials and pill bottles at auction on eBay and Etsy.com. With one
exception, all the caps on these containers, dated from 1932 to 2003, appeared
to be pre-threaded, not roll-on. A very small number appeared to be aluminum,
but the vast majority appeared to be tinplate or Bakelite. We obtained a sample
of these containers at auction. All the caps on the bottles from this sample
were easily removed.[32]

The only medicine bottle we found, in
addition to the vial itself, that appears to have an aluminum R-O cap was a bottle
of topical cocaine ointment, pictured below. The bottle has the locking band as
described in postwar trade journals, and a paper label dated February 2003.

Fig. 11: Cocaine hydrochloride bottle with R-O cap

We have been seeking but lack data concerning
when R-O closures were used on drug containers in countries other than the
United States. It could be that the absence of data indicates this type of cap was
seldom or never used on drug containers elsewhere in the world, but we cannot
say for sure.

A Knurly Problem

Experts from the Bottle Research Group have
identified one feature of the vial, however, that causes them to say it is definitely
not from the 1930s and thus could not possibly be Earhart’s. They say
the little tooth-like marks on the perimeter of the base are datable to the
1950s or later.

Fig. 12: Perimeter knurling on base of the vial

The tooth-like marks are an example of what
is known as resting point knurling, defined as marks impressed by machine to
the bottle mold, which in turn create marks on the perimeter (the resting
point) of a slightly concave bottle base. According to Russ Hoenig, a former Owens-Illinois
shop foreman, these marks offered protection to the glass against cracking. These
and other like marks “became a necessity as bottles were light-weighted with
thinner glass. The cold checks (cracks) present on all bottles formed prior to
annealing now penetrated proportionately deeper through the glass wall
thickness on lightweight flow-manufactured bottles, which caused breakage.”[33]

The earliest documented date assigned to
resting point knurling of the type exhibited on the Nikumaroro medicine vial is
1958. Coincidentally, that date is based on another Nikumaroro glass vessel, a green
beverage container upturned as a grave marker on the western shore of the
island, a few hundred meters north of the landing channel (editor's note: the Ritiati Bottle Grave, recorded in 1997 and again in 2015, now heavily eroded). That bottle has a
date code of “58” to the right of the second Owens-Illinois trademark, which
first appeared on bottles in 1954.

Fig. 13: Green beverage bottle in grave on western shore of Nikumaroro

Base markings used to prevent cracking could,
as in the case of the amber vial, surround the perimeter of a bottle base, but
much more often they covered the entire base. Where such marks were impressed on
the mold’s base plate by machine, they are called full base knurling. Where such
marks were impressed on the mold’s base plate by hand, they are called full
base stippling. According to the Bottle Research Group, full base knurling by
machine first appeared in 1945, and full base stippling by hand first appeared
in general use in 1940.[34][35]

However, the timeline constructed by the
Bottle Research Group may not be perfect. There is evidence that full base
stippling by hand appeared on select drug containers as early as 1932.

Antidotes

We have located two identically designed “Abbott
Lab” pill bottles in amber with full base hand stippling, identical base
markings (including the same plant number and year code), and identical prescription
wraparound labels.

Fig. 14: Twin pill bottles

Fig. 15: The base of one of the Abbott Lab pill bottles

The label on one of the bottles has been
sunned to the point that most of the printing is no longer legible. The label
on the other is legible, but the typewritten year of its prescription date is
slightly faded. To help determine exactly what the year on the label of this
bottle is, we consulted a board-certified document examiner. Emily Will, D-BFDE
(http://qdewill.com), stated her professional opinion, based on rigorously
certified techniques, that the year of the label’s prescription date is 1934.[36]

On the base of the bottle with the dated
label, the embossed year-of-manufacture code, situated to the right of the
first Owens-Illinois trademark (used from 1929 to 1954), is a 2. This
represents a year ending in the numeral 2. We presume that the bottle was
manufactured in the year of the prescription date on the label, or in a prior
year, such that the bottle’s year of manufacture must be earlier than or equal
to 1934. The only calendar year between 1929 and 1954 that ends in 2 and is
earlier than or equal to 1934 is 1932. Therefore, it is reasonable to presume
this bottle with full base stippling and a dated paper label was manufactured
in 1932.

We have located another amber medicine
bottle, also with full base stippling. This bottle’s design is patented, as
indicated by a patent number, 94824, stamped on the base. The U.S. Patent
Office approved the patent in 1935.[37]
The plant number, situated on the base to the left of the first Owens-Illinois
mark (1929-1954), is Owens-Illinois plant number 4, Clarksburg, West Virginia,
which went idle in 1944.[38] The
year-of-manufacture code, situated on the base to the right of the mark, is a 9,
which signifies a year ending in the numeral 9. Based on the Clarksburg plant’s
years of operation, the bottle cannot be dated to 1949. Based on the patent
date, it cannot be dated to 1929. Therefore, the bottle is dated with certainty
to 1939, a year prior to the earliest previously documented example of full
base stippling.

Fig. 16: Base of 1939 amber medicine bottle

While we have yet seen no glass container
earlier than 1958 with the same resting point knurling as found on the
Nikumaroro vial, the pill bottle and the patented amber bottle demonstrate that
no dating system is perfect. Careful research may occasionally uncover exceptions
to any archaeological dating rule. The Bottle Research Group looked closely at
beer and soda bottles for relevant examples when it constructed its timeline,
but it appears that it did not inspect medicine containers.[39]

An Amelia-fact?

Since full base stippling was first used on
some medicine containers a few years before beer and soda, it may be that
perimeter knurling followed a like pattern, first appearing on select medicines
in the 1930s and then later on beverages in the 1940s once it was needed for
the lighter weight bottles. We do not know whether these speculations are true,
but they are logical. If they are true, and if the vial really is from
the U.S., then Amelia Earhart just may have brought the vial from Toluca Lake
Pharmacy to the island. At least the possibility should not be ruled out. But
we have other caveats, such as:

·If the vial was Earhart’s, it likely took a
circuitous route to the village, which is “not where we are likely to find
Earhart-related objects in their original contexts.”[40]
Instead, it was likely brought there from somewhere else.

·We do not know the full list of pharmacies in
the world whose name, street, or city end in UCA, but, as has been stated, we
do know that the colony was supplied by an Australian firm, which could easily
be a source of pharmaceutical vials.

·We know that at least five Coast Guardsmen at
the Loran Station on Nikumaroro between 1944 and 1946 lived before the war in
U.S. cities or towns that were within driving distance (1 to 100 miles) of several
towns with pharmacies in the database of UCA pharmacies.[41]

Conclusions and Questions

Some of the Nikumaroro artifacts fascinate because
they may be of a certain time, the 1930s, or of a certain person, a castaway. The
amber vial fascinates because, although it is not proven to be, it just might be
of a certain place, a little village in California that once counted Amelia
Earhart among its own – along with a friendly drug store, named Toluca.[42]

Since the island, however, had its own
village, and a history of colonists, Coast Guardsmen, explorers, researchers
and others, who doubtless used medicines, there exist other equally or more equally
plausible ideas as to the amber vial’s provenance. We have ideas, but few
definitive answers.

Nevertheless, there are some questions that
might be answerable, definitively we hope, through further research, to which
anyone is welcome to contribute:

1. Have you seen the markings found on the bottom of the vial on
other glass vessels? Can you say what they mean?

2. Can you locate any of the following at auction, antique shops or archaeological
sites?

·R-O closures on medicine containers

·Medicine containers with resting point
knurling

·Base-stippled medicine containers whose
manufacture date is from the 1930s

·Toluca Lake Pharmacy vials

3. Do you know of other pharmacies outside the U.S., in Australia or
elsewhere, with names ending in “UCA”? Do you know of any we missed inside the
U.S.?

We also have some questions that might be
answerable by those intrepid researchers fortunate enough to be on the next cruise
to Nikumaroro in 2017:

A. What types of medicine containers (vials, pill bottles, etc.) can
be found near the village dispensary and elsewhere in the village?

B. Can the amber vial be located again, recorded for its context and
associations, and retrieved for further analysis? If so, what tests might bring
back the most relevant data?

Research will continue on these questions and,
very likely and in keeping with the nature of a mystery, many more that we have
not yet thought to ask.

[8] On November 23 and 24, 2015, The Chemical Heritage
Foundation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania generously opened up its collection of
Hayes Directories for research purposes. We are indebted to librarian Ashley
Augustyniak for her assistance.

[9] The pharmacy database may be viewed at
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h34l05afr89gbbo/Pharmacy%20Database%20and%20Loran%2092%20Census.xls?dl=0

[10] For pharmacies in business after 1997, we were unable
to access the relevant Hayes Directories. Instead, we used pharmacy directories
available online from insurers. For these pharmacies, we estimated the
commercial strength scores based on size of the market. For those years in the
20th century for which no Hayes Directory was available, we filled
in missing data by using information from Hayes Directories from years prior to
and later than the gap, when it was logical to do so.

[14] The chief pharmacist, owner and founder of Toluca
Lake Pharmacy was Robert G. Eyth. Eyth is an Anglo-Saxon word that is loosely
translated as “friendly.” The 1937-38 San Fernando Valley telephone directory
lists no doctor by the name of “Friend.” In Letters from
Amelia, a compilation of letters written by Earhart, editor Jean Backus
chose to redact the name of Dr. Friend, instead referencing him or her as “the
doctor.” She presumably did this to mask the doctor’s identity (for reasons
unknown).

[36] For Emily Will’s full forensic report, see
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zqp92wn8wb17xms/AABC2IouXb_YFz4sD6_wHGDva?dl=0. For
a biographical timeline (source: Ancestry.com) of persons whose names appear on
the label, see
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d7fhc702fksm3ge/Photo%20Jul%2005%2C%2011%2005%2046%20AM.png?dl=0.
The timeline demonstrates the label is internally consistent with the
prescription date of 1934.

[37] http://www.google.com/patents/USD94824 and also
https://www.sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/USD94824.pdf

[39] The archaeological site from which examples of
bottles with stippling and knurling were obtained was the back lot of a former
beer distributor in El Paso, Texas. Lockhart, Bill. “Re: The Boston Pill
Bottle.” Message to Joe Cerniglia and Thomas King. 7 Feb 2016. E-mail.

[41] Using Ancestry.com, we compiled a census of all 71
men who inhabited Loran Unit 92 on Nikumaroro, to try to discover each man’s
residence just prior to World War II. See the census at the second tab of the
Excel document at
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h34l05afr89gbbo/Pharmacy%20Database%20and%20Loran%2092%20Census.xls?dl=0.
The personnel roster was sourced from www.loran-history.info/roster.aspx.

[42] For a circa 1959 tour of shops
along Toluca Lake's main road, Riverside Drive, which includes a Toluca
Pharmacy at 0:55, see http://youtu.be/3Rk1r6M0G8I

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About Me

Thomas F. King holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of California Riverside (1976), and has worked since the 1960s in the evolving fields of research and management variously referred to as heritage, cultural resource management, and historic preservation. He is particularly known for his work with Section 106 of the U.S. National Historic Preservation Act, and with indigenous and other traditional cultural places.

King is the author and editor of ten textbooks and tradebooks (See http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-F.-King/e/B001IU2RWK/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1353864454&sr=1-2-ent) as well as scores of journal articles, popular articles, and internet offerings on heritage topics.His career includes the conduct of archaeological research in California and the Micronesian islands, management of academy-based and private cultural resource consulting organizations, helping establish government historic preservation systems in the freely associated states of Micronesia, oversight of U.S. government project review for the federal government’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, service as a litigant and expert witness in heritage-related lawsuits, and extensive work as a consultant and educator in heritage-related topics. He is the co-author of the U.S. National Park Service's government-wide guidance on "traditional cultural properties" (TCPs; see http://www.nps.gov/nr/publications/bulletins/pdfs/nrb38.pdf). He occasionally teaches short classes about historic preservation project review, traditional cultural places, and consultation with indigenous groups, and consults and writes as TFKing PhD LLC. Current major clients include several American Indian tribes and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.